


do only harm

by summerdayghost



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Obsession, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25439803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/pseuds/summerdayghost
Summary: This was one of the natural side effects of Bruce’s total and complete invasion of his brain.
Relationships: Thomas Elliot/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	do only harm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ictus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ictus/gifts).



Deep down the name he called himself was still and always would be, Tommy. This was one of the natural side effects of Bruce’s total and complete invasion of his brain. Bruce had called him Tommy once upon a time and therefore Tommy he would be forever more. Sometimes he heard his name in his head in Bruce’s voice. Okay, far more than sometimes, but also far, far more often than Tommy would ever be comfortable with admitting.

Over the years Tommy tried a couple of times to dedicate his mind to something else entirely, something that was not Bruce Thomas Wayne (Tommy always held on to the middle name as proof that he existed within Bruce even though he knew that train of thought was irrational, Bruce’s middle name came from his father, but Tommy had a tendency to attribute that to fate and fate’s investment that they be together and of all consuming importance to one another even if he also understood that train of thought to be irrational, it was a vicious cycle). He never really managed to make it work for the sole reason that his heart was not in it. Oh more than enough desire existed within him to power such ambitions, but that desire was facing the wrong way and committed to the opposite cause. If anything all these attempts were good for was ultimately lodging Bruce even more firmly into his psyche.

When Tommy was young he tried studying history. The ancients interested him the most. Antiquity was a completely different world from the one Tommy already felt he knew too well, and yet the thoughts and ideas of the time survived and resonated better than anything else Tommy had ever heard (that did not come directly from Bruce’s lips that is). Naturally, he found himself particularly fascinated by the works of the Ancient Greek philosophers. Geniuses, the whole lot of them.

But then he became fixated on Aristotle and some of the things he had to say about friendship. It was clear that every single word Aristotle had ever uttered on the subject was actually about Bruce. Or rather applied to Bruce considering the timeline, but that did not make much of a difference in Tommy’s heart in the same way that friendship maybe not being the right word to describe Tommy’s feelings considering how many boys with black hair and blue eyes he had already taken home by the time he was eighteen did not make much of a difference to the clarity he found in these words.

“Between friends there is no need of justice.”

Tommy would see that quote and think about Bruce. Particularly he would think about Bruce’s obsession with the abstract concept of justice and its practice. Oh, he tried to hide it from the world, but Tommy was not the world. He was just Tommy who knew Bruce inside and out and could see what consumed him. He really wished Bruce would not let justice eat him so, not when he did not have to. Why would he have to when they already had each other? Shouldn’t that have been enough for him?

“A friend is a second self.”

Tommy would see that quote and think about Bruce. He was not sure who would be original and who would be the second. His love for Bruce was intense enough that Bruce counted in many ways as an extension of himself, and yet Tommy felt no kinship with the myth of Narcissus. When he read that old story he only felt any real sympathy for Echo. Narcissus deserved to drown. Although Tommy would like to be a second Bruce. Maybe then he could be truly perfect for once in his life.

“Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

Tommy would see that quote and think about Bruce. Although for them it would probably be more accurate to say, “Friendship is two souls dwelling in a single body.” Tommy most certainly used to have a soul in the same way that there was a time before Bruce was everything he lived and breathed even if he could not remember it very clearly, but he had not been able to feel it within him lately. He had not felt his soul in a very long time. He liked to imagine that it lived inside Bruce now, cuddled up and warm next to Bruce’s soul. Something like that would be everything he wanted, everything he deserved.

It got to the point where any piece of philosophy would prompt days of thinking about Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, and only Bruce from the power of pure association alone.

When Tommy was slightly less young but no less naive he began studying medicine. He really thought that this was going to be his life’s calling, his purpose outside of Bruce. Being a doctor and saving lives was going to be so important that Bruce would hardly be background noise anymore. Not even a blip on his radar.

Those dreams were crushed the first time Tommy took a university course featuring a human cadaver. Fate was either giving Tommy a massive blinking neon sign or was hardcore trying to fuck with his head because the cadaver, a young man with black hair and blue eyes which was a far cry from the geriatric Tommy was expecting, might as well have been identical to Bruce. The cadaver even had moles and scars in the same places even if no one else saw them when he pointed them out. It was almost hard to believe that the cadaver was not actually Bruce. If Tommy had not seen Bruce right after that first day with the cadaver he probably would have assumed the worst. The resemblance was so strong that in another world, a world where this cadaver was still with the land of the living because whatever unimaginable thing that brought him into this classroom never occurred, Tommy could see himself asking this young man on a date. Hell, he could see himself walking this young man down the aisle.

That experience made it clear that even medicine was going to be entirely about Bruce. So, why not give into fate? Tommy was never going to be free of Bruce, and this was the reason Tommy had to make sure that Bruce would never be free of Tommy.


End file.
